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Tuesday, August 3

The Urk Store is full of Forge

So URK let us know about some Forge stuff... a straight swipe from Bnet as I've been at the pub....

Did a little bit of work this morning on the map formerly known as Jurkout. Riptide is coming along nicely, if I don't say so myself. As you can see from the new overview, I've added some additional side routes and slapped in some spawns. Spiffy, eh?

At first, I plopped down like eight initial spawns for both teams, but Chad told me that it's not necessary as long as I crowd them with standard spawn points. When a player spawns into a match at the beginning of the game, the influence on surrounding spawns becomes super high. So, as long as you haven't placed the opposing team's spawns with direct line of sight to your first drop, you should be a-okay with a few initial spawns and a buttload of regulars.

We'll see if he's right when it comes to playtesting this sucker. I'm actually kind of hoping I run into some significant spawning issues so I can detail them out for you. If not, I hear Chad is working on something that will offer much more detail and expert advice on the subject anyway. It's probably a wood carving. That'd be awesome.

So, here's back of Red Base. Before I dropped these spawns into place, I switched back to player mode and stood in the proposed spot to make sure I had some good cover and a visible route to run from word go. Since I'm down on the water, and that water can be deadly, I needed to account for players who hold forward on the stick at spawn. Don't want my eager beavers dropping into the drink, now do I? Nope, I want them safe and sound and headed in the right direction. On Riptide's low side, that means exit, stage Blue Base.

I also added some additional spawn points along the side routes, so if a team happens to occupy both bases simultaneously, there's still some safe territory to tread along either side of the map.

And as I mentioned above, I added some additional routes heading in and out of both bases by extending the floating side platforms all the way back to Red Base.

Conversely, here's a look at Blue Team's spawns. Initially, they all start out up top, but there are ample spawns above and below to account for safe reincarnation.

See? Placing the spawns below the water line proved problematic. They're really tough to see once submerged. I opted to make these particular points fixed, so I could float them just above the surface.

Spawns taken care of, I did a little light housekeeping. I kept hitting my head on this structure when I leaped over the water.

So it's dead to me. I don't need the budget, but there's nothing worse than smacking your helmet and falling to your death during what otherwise should have been an expertly timed leap of faith. One thing I really appreciated during this delicate operation was the ability to see which object I was about to manipulate by pressing X. Forge kindly popped up the properties of the correct object, so I knew that the subsequent deletion was going to remove the exact right piece. Yay, science!

I need a weapon. Get it? Master Chief delivered that line in the blockbuster video game, Halo 2. Here, I'm slapping in a DMR at the top of the main structure at Red Base. It's got a sweet line of sight to the Blue Base's extended platforms so you can deliver super fun suppressive fire.

And you'll be able to operate a little more effectively from Red now that I've decided to glass off the central window inside the Blue Base. Just seemed a little too enticing for campers. If you want to assault Red, you'll have to move outside your comfort zone. If it turns out that this new addition is too restrictive, I'll utilize the already detailed delete function to break it back open.

The extended walkways offer little in the way of cover, but they will reward you with a longer range weapon if you dash out to the far end.

And you'll likely want somebody out on the ledge since the Red Team will be heading low to claim the partially submerged Shotgun.

And moving out into the Kiddie Pool to snag the Rocket Launcher. I tried to time the Rocket run as best as I could. By my count the mad dash from either initial spawn is right at nine seconds, with both teams needing to leave cover to get their hands on the totally tubular death dealing machine. Hopefully, it'll play out all Risk vs. Reward like. No telling until I get some games in.

Which is my next stop. Riptide was submitted to our official internal playtest group this morning. If all goes to plan, I should be seeing some feedback (and tons of sarcastic remarks) pretty soon.